Anger as Deepcut inquiry rejected

The Government has again rejected calls for a public inquiry into the deaths of four young soldiers at the controversial Deepcut barracks.

Armed Forces Minister Bob Ainsworth said the publication of official military Board of Inquiry (BoI) reports into two of the deaths did not change the Ministry of Defence's position.

Mr Ainsworth's insistence there would not be a public inquiry angered the families of the young recruits, who all died of bullet wounds in separate incidents at the Surrey barracks between 1995 and 2002.

The newly-published BoI reports relate to Privates Geoff Gray and James Collinson, who were found dead within six months of each other. Both reports agreed with the open verdicts recorded at their inquests, Mr Ainsworth said in a written statement to the House of Commons.

They supported the 2006 findings of the Blake Review into the Deepcut deaths that there was "no substantial evidence" supporting third party involvement in Pte Gray's death, he said.

But the teenager's father, also called Geoff, said he was bitterly disappointed by the decision not to launch a public inquiry.

He said: "If we have new evidence coming out now, what other evidence is there to be explored? I am pretty sure that someone who was there that night Geoff died knows something more, and they're scared to come forward."

Mr Gray, 45, of Hackney, east London, told of the private promise made to his dead son when he saw him in the mortuary after his death.

He said: "I saw my son on the slab and I told him I would do everything in my power to find out what happened that night."